Cfree

Patenting and Open Innovation routes

Patenting, the main feature of a closed development paradigm, requires significant resources both, to apply and maintain it [patent]. However, this step is very unlikely to contribute any considerable value to neither to product development, nor to commercialization. In meanwhile, open source product development approach enhances the ability of an enterprise to fit within the current market conditions, characterized by more efficient use of resources and rapidly increasing pace of innovation.

Open Innovation

Firms are moving towards a more open system of innovation where innovation is created through interactions within and outside the company (suppliers, competitors, customers, universities, research organizations)¹

The open model of operation and decision making allows concurrent input of different agendas, approaches and priorities, and differs from the more closed, centralised models of development. This allows to conserve precious resources, which otherwise could be wasted on duplicative efforts. A more economical approach is to invest these resources into the perpetual collaborative innovation process, fostering creativity, technology and sustainability.

Making money with Open Source Hardware

So why not to patent?

• "Patents neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for successful commercialization"²

• “Patent systems are often justified by an assumption that innovation will be spurred by the prospect of patent protection, leading to the accrual of greater societal benefits than would be possible under non-patent systems. However, little empirical evidence exists to support this assumption. …if it turns out that our laws are based upon misinformation and bad assumptions, society may be failing to promote beneficial new technologies that could improve potential quality of life.”³⁴

• “It is this that one cannot ever expect the grant of a patent by a Patent Office to be also a certificate of validity. It never has been and never will be.”⁵

• In the Internet age, generally speaking, finding material prior art is usually not hard. Nonetheless, there is a blind spot of 12-18 months, while patents are being processed by patent offices and information is not available in any databases.

• In the UK and other countries courts are willing to grant interim injunctions. One unfortunate aspect of this is that if it turns out the patent is valid and there should never have been an injunction, the patentee and the government are not compensated for legal cost.⁶

• People challenging the validity of your patent can start a case in a regional court and if you are challenging the validity of their claim, the question of validity can be transferred to central court herein all this takes time and long term uncertainty can be damaging even if your patent is eventually upheld.⁷

• The whole notion of intellectual property and patents is changing, with legislation and legal decisions making it more difficult to create patents and protect them.⁸

• "It's now sometimes desirable to give away things that we used to think needed to be protected at almost any cost…By making a certain kind of information available for free, a company may be able to harness the efforts of lots of other people to get something very valuable to the company."⁹

• Lodging a provisional patent doesn't give certainty to investors in a sense that it is not examined and a patent might not be granted and event if it is, it would take 12-18 months to get the invention patentable and for licensing revenues to become a reality. During which time technological development halts and competitors are aware of your design and can come up with improvements and patent those, thus making licensing efforts extra difficult.

• Grant of patent doesn't mean that the technology will be successfully licensed.

• Rough cost of pursuing International PCT is around ~$50000 for submission with subsequent expenditures in range of ~$500k per annum to defend or maintain an International Patent.

• IP is defined by a logically prior conception of the public domain. And unless invention is produced without relying on the infrastructure (e.g. pen and paper to write your ideas on) which is derived from public domain, the notion of IP can in many cases be highly contestable. In its current form, patenting can often halt innovation and progress in many industries.

• The Canadian Supreme Court invoked “…society's interest in maintaining a robust public domain that could help foster future creative innovation” to set a standard of originality that goes beyond “…a mere copy or [simply showing] industriousness” and the need for “…room for the public domain to flourish as others are able to produce new works by building on the ideas and information contained in the works of others.¹⁰

This page is dynamic. More data will be added as it becomes available.